The Canadian-based commercial aircraft and train manufacturer indicated that the headcount reductions will be global in-nature, affecting administrative and non production positions across the company, and are expected to save it about $300 million by the end of 2018.

According to business media reports, about two-thirds of the latest headcount reductions will stem from Bombardier Transportation, the company’s rail manufacturing business. About 2000 of these job cuts are expected to impact employees within Canada.

The cuts are further expected to include a realignment of design, engineering and manufacturing structures and the creation of new “Centers of Excellence” overseeing both rail and commercial aircraft manufacturing.

As Supply Chain Matters and business media continually points out, Bombardier has made a big strategic bet with the development and production in the CSeries single aisle commercial aircraft being a global airline alternative to aircraft producers Airbus and Boeing. This new aircraft finally entered commercial service with Swiss International after a multi-year program delay and flew its first paying passengers in July.

While the new aircraft is garnering positive reviews from airline customers, the financial toll on the broader operations of Bombardier continue and have had a noteworthy financial impact on the company. A year ago, to overcome continued financial funding needs, Bombardier struck an agreement with the government of Quebec to give-up nearly half its stake in the CSeries program in exchange for a $1 billion additional investment. The company further sold an equity stake in its train manufacturing division to a Quebec pension fund for $1.5 billion. That division continues to respond to stiff global competition coming from China’s lower-cost, state-owned rail equipment producers who are in the process of merging.

We previously highlighted that Airbus’s first-half shipping performance related to its new A320 neo aircraft were noticeably impacted by delayed delivery of Pratt’s new geared turbo fan engine. Airbus had delivered just 5 A320neos in Q1 and 3 in Q2 while nearly a dozen of completed aircraft was reported at the time to be lined-up on factory adjacent runways and parking areas awaiting Pratt to deliver completed engines. The July delay was associated with fixing the engine’s cooling design through a combination of software and component modifications.

In early September, Bombardier publicly disclosed a delivery schedule adjustment due to the shortfall in expected completed engines from Pratt. While re-adjusting to a lower revenue expectation, the manufacturer reaffirmed its prior earnings commitment, most likely setting the stage for the current headcount reductions.

Moving forward, the new CSeries is more than ever highly dependent on the consistent and more-timely performance of its sole aircraft engine supplier, Pratt. Industry watchers and academics may well look back and question whether specification and reliance on a single aircraft engine design was a wise one. Then again, Bombardier, from the get-go, may not have had the financial deep pockets to be able to certify and source more than one engine supplier.

In July, innovative electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors announced its Q2 product and operational results. In our July Supply Chain Matters blog posting related to Q2’s performance, we concluded that Tesla remained challenged with supply chain ramp-up issues as it strives to meet aggressive short and required longer-term production scale-up needs for existing as well as future model needs.

According to a published report by The Wall Street Journal, CEO Elon Musk called for a strong third quarter to strengthen his equity raising case for scaling up the supply chain and production needs of the newly announced Model 3, along with massive lithium-ion battery facility, the termed gigafactory, near Sparks Nevada. It appears that operational teams indeed performed in Q3.

From an operational perspective, Tesla delivered approximately 24,500 vehicles across the globe in Q3, of which 15,800 were Model S and 8,700 were Model X. That level of output was nearly double that of the year-earlier quarter. The Model X production performance improvement stands out because of that vehicle’s previous production hiccups due to design-for-supply chain challenges causing some components such as the vehicle’s doors to be brought in-house. It further represented an increase of just over 70 percent from last quarter’s deliveries of 14,402. Quite impressive. In addition to Q3 deliveries, the manufacturer indicated about 5,500 vehicles were still in transit to customers at the end of the quarter and these will not be counted as deliveries until Q4. Tesla further reiterated its prior guidance of 50,000 vehicles being delivered for the second-half of 2016.

In late July, we posted a blog commentary reflecting on Tesla’s revised master plan as communicated by founder Elon Musk. After taking hundreds of thousands of advanced reservations and up-front financial deposits for the Model 3, Tesla’s initial answer to a mass-produced and more affordable electric vehicle, Tesla had to revise its longer term production plans to target total annual vehicle output of 500,000 vehicles two years earlier than originally planned, which is now planned to occur by 2018. Musk’s response has been to rally his engineering teams to now focus on what is termed: “designing the machine that makes the machine.” In essence, the effort reflects on turning Tesla’s supply chain and existing production facilities into an engineering design challenge in accelerating capacity, integrated design and tory automation. As readers are also aware, Tesla maintains its own global wide logistics and delivery network for finished vehicles, without the use of traditional dealers and finished automobile lot inventories. That adds to the challenge.

If Tesla indeed continues to perform and deliver its anticipated 50,000 vehicles in the second-half of this year, 2016 will close with a production rate of slightly over 83,000 vehicles. That will set the stage for 2017/2018 to ramp-up to the 500,000 volume target, a near tripling of existing capacity and value-chain ramp-up volumes.

While short-term performance indeed looks better, the longer-term challenges remain and it will obviously involve all of the best engineering, supply chain operational minds and advanced technology adoption that Tesla can muster. That is not to state that the goal is not achievable, but rather the effort will be one that will make-up business case stories for many years to come.

The maiden commercial flight of the CS100 was a Zurich to Paris flight. During the first-half of 2016, Bombardier secured firm orders for 127 C Series aircraft. Transport Canada has further awarded type certification to the larger CS300 model aircraft and the delivery of this model to airBaltic is currently scheduled for Q4.

“Over the next few years, several manufacturers from around the world will launch aircraft aimed to compete with Airbus and Boeing. But Bombardier is the first to enter service and the only one that will compete head-to-head within one of their most important market segments.. Not since the demise of McDonnell Douglas and its MD-80 and MD-90 in the late ’90s has there been a third major player to challenge the Airbus-Boeing duopoly.”

“What Bombardier has going for it is the fact that the C-Series is widely viewed as a great plane — receiving critical acclaim for its fuel efficiency, range, and advanced technology.”

If readers have been following our stream of Supply Chain Matters commentaries related to the C-Series program for the past few years, you would have discerned another important advantage from a supply chain perspective. To provide readers just two examples, you can view our original commentary published in 2010and a subsequent 2013 commentary posing the question: can a disruptor compete with giants. If the program had not encountered such setbacks from its original goal to enter the market in 2013, it would have entered operational service much earlier and provided evidence to major airline carriers that it could be a viable alternative to current extended delivery schedules for single aisle aircraft. Now, Bombardier will likely have to deal with the industry-wide supply chain constraints that exist, including availability of the newly designed Pratt & Whitney PurePower® PW1500G engine.

One could classify this as opportunity lost, but then again, only time will tell the ultimate determinant.

For airline and leasing customers, it is indeed good to have choices and options for new commercial aircraft. Both Airbus and Boeing sales teams have been rather aggressive in insuring that airline customers would not consider such an alternative option. But now, when the industry as a whole is constrained, than the most innovative program and supply chain management processes and consequent decision-making can well become the ultimate differentiator as to what airline customer elect to do in their buying choices.

As the commercial aircraft industry moves into the second-half of 2016, it is time for our usual Supply Chain Matters six month industry review of performance. Reflecting on delivery performance thus far, there are continued signs of industry supply chain supply challenges.

Let’s begin with Airbus which reported the booking of a total of 227 confirmed orders in the first six months of the year. That number may be somewhat understated since at the industry’s recently completed Farnborough Air Show, Airbus achieved bragging rights for announcing orders and commitments for 279 commercial aircraft, more than half originating from a single airline customer, that being AirAsia who ordered 100 A320neos.

Airbus recorded the delivery of a total of 298 aircraft in the first-half, which consisted of the following:

160- Single aisle aircraft (Variants of A319, A320, A321)

38- A330’s

27- A350’s

2- A380’s

In the above, tell –tale signs of supply disruption are reflected in two key aircraft. There were only 8 completed deliveries of the brand new A320neo, no doubt reflecting the ongoing catch-up in delivery of the brand new Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan engines. Airbus had delivered just 5 A320neos in Q1 meaning that just 3 were delivered in Q2. As noted in our prior commentary, nearly a dozen of completed A320neos have been reported as lined-up on factory adjacent runways and parking areas awaiting Pratt to deliver completed engines. The exiting delay is associated with fixing the engine’s cooling design through a combination of software and component modifications. Pratt engine deliveries were not expected to catch-up until after June and there are continued reports that Pratt’s supply chain remains strained. The other new engine offering, the new LEAP model from CFM International is expected to be available in the second-half of this year as-well. With a stated target to have a production level of 50 A320neo’s per month by 2017, there is a lot more planning and execution remaining.

A further problematic area acknowledged by Airbus has been supply and bottleneck challenges associated with newest model A350 production, and first-half completion of 27 reflects that ongoing challenge. Supply challenges have been noted as interior seating and structures and Airbus senior management has expressed public frustration regarding ongoing supply glitches.

Turning to Boeing, the aircraft producer reported the booking of a total of 321 orders in the first-half. At the completion of the Farnborough event in July, Boeing was able to announce orders and commitments for 182 aircraft but just 20 actual new firm orders.

Boeing further recorded the delivery of a total of 298 aircraft reflecting its previously announced scaled-down expectations for delivery cadence this year. The breakdown was:

248-737’s

3- 747’s

5- 767’s

51- 777’s

68- 787 Dreamliners

In the above, a challenged area remains completed deliveries of Dreamliners although the cadence has improved slightly beyond 10 per month. There is still a long way to go in ramp-up and lots of internal pressures remain since the program remains cash negative until delivery performance dramatically improves. Both Boeing’s Seattle and South Carolina assembly facilities are now producing completed Dreamliners.

With current order backlogs of nearly ten years for Airbus and over seven years for Boeing at current production cadence levels, both manufacturers have been concentrating on increased production automation and longer-term strategic supplier agreements. In June, key suppliers urged both manufacturers to move cautiously on demand noting that there are definitive restrictions on the ability to ramp-up the industry supply chain to expected volume output cadence. Another growing concern is the ability of aircraft engine producers to be able to support higher output volumes given the increased technical sophistication of the new generation engines. Pratt alone is in the midst of managing five different new engine models and with both commercial aircraft dominant manufacturers continuing to book further orders and explore newer model introduction, the pressure builds.

Again, only time will prescribe the course of events in an industry that is clearly reflecting supply chain distress.

Last week, this analyst and executive editor had the opportunity to attend OpenText Enterprise World 2016, this vendor’s annual customer conference and we walked away with rather positive impressions regarding direction and services.

OpenText has now assimilated technology centered on three focused strategic areas which CEO and CTO Mark Barrenechea addressed in the conference opening keynote:

OpenText Enterprise Information Management (EIM) which is just about everything related to document and content management. Many SAP ERP users may or may not be familiar with the brand, but much of the document content exchanged within SAP applications is powered by OpenText including new iterations of SAP HANA and SAP S4HANA applications. Likewise, the vendor supports EIM needs for other ERP systems as well.

OpenText Business Network which is a B2B business network platform that supports EDI messaging, supplier and customer onboarding, purchase-to-pay transactional support and other growing managed services. The gem of this network is the 2013 acquisition of the GXS Trading Grid network with its genesis as the prior General Electric Information Services. In June of 2012 this author declared that GXS was the hidden gem in B2B information transfer and software services and that prediction continues to manifest itself.

OpenText Analytics which is the new evolving area for this provider, one that promises to harness insights and business decision support related to both EIM and Business Network operational and business information flows. This capability has become a new strategic thrust for the company, one that by our view can present a more visible player to the analytics and enterprise technology market.

Regarding the latter, Barrenechea provided two major product announcements in conjunction with the conference. The first was Project Bandaroo, a technology to be focused on the changing nature of work. It was described as bringing together OpenText Core, the vendor’s core Cloud platform for everything related to EIM, with other elements of social communities, channels, bots and project management. An on-stage demo outlined a scenario of working group interactions and discussion forums centered on specific information needs. From our lens, the concept seems interesting but needs more specifics related to actual business challenges. Timetable communicated was the second-half of 2017.

The second announcement related to Project Magellan which is described as a next generation cognitive platform being designed to integrate voice, video, natural language processing and other content. It was outlined as an open systems based platform that would leverage both the Spark Apache platform along with the analytics capabilities of Actuate, OpenText’s most recent acquisition focused on advanced analytics. Barrenechea was not shy in making a direct head-to-head technology comparison with the IBM Watson Cognitive platform and that his company will compete directly as an alternative platform in the market. From this author’s lens, this was a far more newsworthy announcement and one to keep an eye on in the coming months, especially since such technology can be applied to the OpenText Business Network. This capability is also planned for introduction in the second-half of 2017.

Regarding the Business Network, much more strategy and information was shared with conference attendees, information that we garnered from an April industry analyst event. Product managers declared that upwards of $7.4 trillion in commerce, the equivalent of 10 percent of world GDP, along with connections to 65,000 partners are currently supported by this network. Support encompasses 37 data centers across 18 countries and 25 satellites.

In addition to electronic transactional messaging (EDI), support is provided in the process areas of purchase-to-pay (P2P), order and shipment visibility and other business process areas. Evolved capabilities in a series of managed services for specific industries and customers continues to expand with an increase of over 200 customers in this segment alone since the acquisition of GXS. The audience was reminded that OpenText Business Network is currently positioned by Gartner in the Leaders Quadrant for B2B Business Networks.

Our on-site executive briefings not only provided more background to new functionality and services that are enabled by the latest OpenText Suite 16 product release but future capabilities being planned in the all-important area of supply chain wide analytics. Of further interest is the introduction of what is termed as Supply Chain Activity Index, an analytical based aggregate view of the B2B network, with forms of Business Process Management (BPM) support for processes that span the supply and value chain network. These two areas should really peak interest, depending on eventual design and functionality.

There was additional validation that support for SAP Ariba’s efforts to move beyond indirect procurement and support more direct materials procurement processes such as electronic invoicing and messaging will stem from OpenText Managed Network Services.

Our other impressions from this event include:

OpenText is indeed well on the road towards addressing the complex and fast-changing requirements for supporting globally-extended B2B networks beyond electronic messaging and EDI. Unfolding support in specific managed services and analytics areas are very promising as is the unfolding strategy of leveraging analytical capabilities to support network-wide decision-making.

An open question acknowledged by senior management is whether OpenText remains an infrastructure and Cloud services provider or moves more boldly into applications. This will be an area we keep an eye to in the coming months since there are pros and cons to either.

We are of the impression that OpenText senior management now understands the stand-alone nature and business value of OpenText Business Network in terms of an independent marketing persona of that of EIM that includes need for brand recognition within broader supply chain management functional audiences. Anticipate more concentrated efforts and visibility in this area.

Having the opportunity to attend many vendor conferences in any given year, this author can quickly extract a sense of overall management culture. Having now had direct 1:1 interaction with a number of OpenText senior executives at multiple events, we are impressed with their openness, sensitivity to customer and market needs and desire to make good on commitments. That was supported by some select customer interviews conducted. Once more, the company continues to reach out and hire and retain additional experienced talent. As an example, we were impressed with the technical savvy and communication skills of Actuate executives brought forward from that most recent acquisition.

As always, this analyst will provide continued assessment commentaries related to both Open Text and the broader B2B supply chain business network technology landscape. In the meantime, if readers have specific questions, send us an email or call.